Her trauma therapist encouraged her to sleep near grass, where the earthy scent could infuse her senses, to try to counsel Ro through her fear of soil after being buried in a makeshift coffin. When she finally slept, it was in the light of day, and exhaustion-driven; borne of her insomnia, for fear of the nightmares that plagued every moment her eyes were closed.
The coffin was erected from old banana boxes that allowed soil to fall through the gaps that were supposed to allow for oxygen. It was gone long before her rescue. She was beaten and attacked by a violent gang who took turns violating her previously sacred body, then stabbed, and shot her repeatedly, leaving her for dead.
When the doctors thought she was still unconscious, they told her family she had been clinically dead for three minutes and fifty-eight seconds before they were able to resuscitate her. Rosalie took mental stock of her body, trying to name the parts that hurt the worst, but she couldn’t move for pain – it took her breath away.
How could all this have happened? Focusing on what her fuzzy memory could remember, she had gone out on the lash with her friends, at least she was supposed to… She put on her killer new dress, designed for a night out, and turned up to their meeting point, already half-drunk, since that was their routine – to drink as much as possible before going out, to make her cash last longer.
Ro found her circle had ditched her purposely, to set her up on a blind date with this gorgeous guy they found on a dating website. She was out of her mind with fury when she realised what they had done. They knew she would never go for this, so they deliberately kept her out of the loop. They always claimed she needed to get out of her own way; that she needed to move on. She would never forgive them for this.
The moment her doctors and her family finished their conversation, Ro opened her eyes, returning from deep in a cave outside space and time. But when she did, and her eyes blurred as they adjusted to the light, Ro recoiled in alarm – the guy from the bar last night lay naked beside her.
She sat up and looked around her bedroom. Stunned out of her mind, Rosalie checked her body beneath the sheet and didn’t find a scratch – had she really dreamed the entire episode – again?
Erica Sharlette is a Londoner of West Indian and Asian descent. She writes to escape the daily battle of 17 chronic, degenerative illnesses and, after learning of flash fiction in April 2021, was published five times last year. Alongside her début novel, she is also working on her second novella-in-flash. You can find Erica on Twitter at @ESsWords and at esw.bio.link.
Photo by Surendran MP on Unsplash.
